My daughter, about to lose her second milk tooth, told me today that she doesn't believe anymore in Ratoncito Pérez - the mouse who exchanges the teeth to gifts in Spain.

In his 1970 song God John Lennon listed idols that he does not believe in:  magic, I Ching, Bible, tarot, Hitler, Jesus, Kennedy, Buddha, mantra, Gita, yoga, Elvis, and kings. My Daughter still believes in the Three Kings from the East, who bring presents to Spanish kids on the day of Epiphany. On the other hand, she doesn't believe in monsters though I'm afraid that soon she will realize that the world is full of them. The Spanish government fired her teacher last week - here the human sacrifice is practiced to please the monster of capitalism whom we fear and worship.

The dream is over
What can I say?

A friend of mine, a famous New Yorker artist, I met on Sunday in Madrid on his way to Helsnki, told me that he always accepts the conditions set by the exhibition organizers. He wasn't going to receive any artist's fee for participating in an important show in a Finnish museum - but didn't complain.

I do complain and have suicidal tendencies in the professional sense by burning bridges where ever I go. I'm a member of Muu, a Finnish interdisciplinary artist association, which is a member of the Artists' Association of Finland aiming to promote the professional and social interest of artists and securing favorable conditions for them.

Now my slide show Syria for Dummies has been selected for the exhibition Personal City organized by Muu and I found out that I'm not going to be paid for it. Of course the production costs of my work are neither covered.

I think it's not very credible that the artists' associations demand that the museums and other institutions pay artists' fees when they don't do it in the projects organized by themselves. My conclusion is that I will participate in the show but resign my membership.

The other day, Luis was in my studio chatting with me while I was drawing a gnome on the paper of Catalonia Oro Negro Hotel (Tenerife). I was dripping, fouling and scratching he drawing and he was asking the meaning of every action.The constant question was - what does that say?

Luis is my neighbor and an amateur painter. But not one of those who paint landscape bullshit. He doesn't know the art history or the theory but he believes that the art is a weapon. His technical skills are still rather low but I think I've never seen any dilettante painter doing such an interesting work - they really don't look like outsider art (they look more like my stuff!).

Luis is against all the decoration in my works. He thinks that the message is the only content and should be as direct as possible. His comments remind me that I'm just an old-fashioned modernist creating beautiful commodities.

Luis is one of the two persons visiting my studio regularly - the other is my wife who thinks that my works are nowadays too illustrative. She thinks I should make more subtle, more beautiful and more complex things.

When many foreigners think of Spain, they think of the bright sun and cheap pints but the country where I've lived over ten years has nothing to do with that panorama. Now in Playa de las Americas, Tenerife, it's the first time I see the touristic beach Spain misconstructed for the British and Nordic working class replete of beans on toast breakfast served all day and shabby lap dance bars catering to shirtless lager bathers.

Neverthless, I've been enjoying the short vacation with four generations of my Finnish family and the beautiful sea views reading Rosa Liksom's story about a Transsiberian rail trip through the 80's Soviet Union and Chan Koonchung's dystopian novel of People's Republic of China in 2013.

I've been having fun in the studio with the adhesive glitter  Luis brought me this week. I'm continuing the Mexican drawings series - regretting not having spent more time in Monterrey when I did a solo show at Pristine Galerie last year.

You need at least one month in a new place to understand a bit about its politics, culture and visual atmosphere. Reading Wikipedia can't be compared with field work. Though the works look good, I'm afraid of them being superficial and full of exotic clichés about the narco-capitalism.